Free Media? Really?!

Yet, another story on YouTube, and video hosting sites:
The News Corporation and NBC Universal is planning on making a website that will house most of their content, available for free to the public, with advertisements. The president of the News Corporation, Peter A. Chernin says that the website will “[have] absolutely no resemblance to YouTube”. You can read the article here.

This is all being done in light of the recent copyright troubles that YouTube has been having: Viacom is suing YouTube for copyright infringement reasons.

The question is whether a website like this will satisfy the consumers. There are still advertisements, and it was not specified how long the advertisements would be, and where they will be placed in the distributed media.

However, a website like this could be a step in the right direction. Even though there will still be advertisements, maybe media companies are catching on: this generation wants things for free. A site like this could be what the consumers are looking for: it’s easy, and it’s legal. It might even be faster (depending on advertisements) and better quality than uploaded videos on YouTube.

Maybe record labels should take a hint, and develop something like MySpace for the bands that are signed to the label. With companies’ unwillingness to change, only small steps will eventually lead to a big change.